Nexstar local stations, including New York’s WPIX, and Cable’s NewsNation go dark on optimum in transportation dispute

Two million subscribers of Optimum pay-TV systems are going without 63 Nexstar Media Group local stations and cable network NewsNation because of a carriage dispute.

The network and stations went dark at 5pm ET on Optimum, which is owned by the US arm of French telecom giant Altice. Like other pay-TV operators, Altice has struggled with cord-cutting and has articulated a view that the video business is less important than it has historically been to growth in its broadband and wireless businesses. Patrick Drahi, the European tycoon who runs parent company Altice, is saddled with significant debt and declining valuations for some of his key holdings.

The impasse comes during a busy period for college football and NFL playoff games. The CW, which is owned by Nexstar, also has the largest concentration of affiliates under the Nexstar roof and has delivered solid ratings for primetime draws such as WWE NXT and All-American.

WPIX, the flagship CW station, is a significant part of the Optimum dispute given the pay-TV system’s heavy concentration in the New York Tri-State area. A total of 42 markets are affected by the match. Along with New York, markets with at least 10% penetration by the local Nexstar affiliate at Optimum include Greenville, NC; Lubbock, TX; Alexandria, LA; Hartford, CT; Clarksburg, WV, according to a person familiar with the system board.

Major markets including LA and Las Vegas also have Nexstar affiliates, although the total number of subscribers is quite small.

Nexstar said it has been trying to engage in “good faith” negotiations with Altice since October. In a press release, the company said, however, Altice responded with demands for “special terms that are wildly out of step with both our long-standing relationship and the cable television market.”

New York sports network MSG, televised home of the NBA’s Knicks and the NHL’s Rangers, went dark on Optimum at the start of 2025 in a dispute that continues.

“Altice has consistently made unreasonable and unprecedented demands on Nexstar, culminating in their decision to walk away from negotiations,” said Nexstar President and COO Michael Biard. “We understand the difficulty of Altice’s financial situation, weighed down as it is by billions in debt, but the solution is not to force Optimum subscribers to constantly pay more while getting less.”

In a statement to Deadline, Optimum accused Nexstar of charging “exorbitant prices” for its programming. The station owner “uses an anti-consumer bargaining tactic — tying local channels to less popular ones — that requires Optimum and its customers to pay for channels like NewsNation, which have essentially no ratings, to continue airing Nexstar broadcast stations in various markets across the country,” the statement added.

In any given month, Optimum claims, 90% of customers (more than 1.2 million) “never tune in to NewsNation.” It therefore makes it “unfair to force customers to pay tens of millions of dollars for content they never see and hold them hostage to force carriage of television stations.”